Restructuring the economy with empathy as its center

Democracy is lost unless we re-structure our economies, and re-structuring our economies requires a new operating system based on different values. That’s what empathy provides, not in its “thin” form as a vague appreciation of peoples’ feelings, but in its “thick” form that commits everyone to foster the wellbeing of others, and do no harm.

“Democracy is lost unless we re-structure our economies, and re-structuring our economies requires a new operating system based on different values. That’s what empathy provides, not in its “thin” form as a vague appreciation of peoples’ feelings, but in its “thick” form that commits everyone to foster the wellbeing of others, and do no harm.

At present, our economic systems afford us only the narrowest view of human potential. They deny us the ability to see people for what they truly are. We define others not by what they have but by what they lack. Rather than examine what they can offer, we categorize vast swaths of our society by what they need. And the harm that is done to others through poverty, inequality and pollution is dismissed as a trade-off against economic efficiency and growth. If empathy is the ability to understand the perspectives of others and use that understanding to guide one’s actions, then it’s safe to conclude that our current economies inculcate the opposite.

What would change if the economy was re-structured with empathy at the center? First of all there would be a different set of priorities: raising and educating children; taking care of the elderly; advancing social justice; preserving the planet; and creating vibrant neighborhoods. Work that supports these priorities would be fully valued and remunerated. This is work that many of us are ready to provide, yet for the most part it is not properly valued in market economies.

In markets prices vary according to supply and demand. If something is scarce the price is high. If something is abundant the price is low. If it is truly abundant, then from a market viewpoint, it is worthless. So the price system doesn’t value the capacities we possess to contribute to each other’s health and fulfillment. These capacities are not scarce, though they may be unequally distributed among people who have different amounts of time available for caring, work and activism in their communities.

Secondly, the importance of money would decline, to be replaced by currencies that value things like time, care and service – the things that enable us to put empathy into action. In our current system, money serves a wide variety of functions: as a means of exchange, a store of value, and a predictor of influence and power. As the last five years of recession have demonstrated, our reliance on money leaves us dependent on those who hold the bulk of it, and makes us vulnerable to sudden changes in the credit supply and the wider financial system.

That’s why we need a different set of currencies that are less vulnerable to these fluctuations, and that are more equally distributed among the population. Such currencies define value by reference to things other than financial assets, and they recognize that every human being has something of importance to contribute to the wellbeing of others in the creation of a better world – currencies of empathy if you will. Unlike money, empathy is limitless. Hoarding it brings no rewards and provides no incentives. Its value is unlocked only when empathy is freely shared.

This is especially important in a democracy, where the responsibilities of citizenship and the capacities required to meet them must be equally distributed throughout the population. If we are to self-govern as much of our lives as possible, then we need currencies that value public goods and reward the energy and potential that exists in every individual. Only then can we fix our schools, build green and safe communities, care for each-other, preserve public lands, and remove the influence of money from politics and decision-making.

The good news is that communities around the world are already developing a variety of local and international currencies to compensate for the failures of traditional monetary systems: consider bitcoins, Germany’s chiemgauer, and the bartering systems that communities have long relied on to get by in hard times. Among the most widely used of these currencies are time credits, in which one hour given is exchanged for one hour received.

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1 Comment →Restructuring the economy with empathy as its center

The Center for Building a Culture of Empathy http://cultureofempathy.com
is working on how to do this transformation to an empathy based society.
how about we do an online panel discussion about this? email me if you’re interested.
Edwin Rutsch
Director: Center for Building a Culture of Empathy

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WRITTEN BY

Michel Bauwens

Michel Bauwens is the founder and president of the P2P Foundation and works in collaboration with a global group of researchers in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property. Bauwens travels extensively giving workshops and lectures on P2P and the Commons as emergent paradigms and the opportunities they present to move towards a post-capitalist world.
In the first semester of 2014, Bauwens was research director of the floksociety.org which produced the first integrated Commons Transition Plan for the government of Ecuador, in order to create policies for a 'social knowledge economy'.
In January 2015 CommonsTransition.org was launched. Commons Transition builds on the work of the FLOK Society and features newly revised and updated, non-region specific versions of these policy documents. Commons Transition aims toward a society of the Commons that would enable a more egalitarian, just, and environmentally stable world. He is a founding member of the Commons Strategies Group, with Silke Helfrich and David Bollier, who have organised major global conferences on the commons and economics.